Crimson Tide

A county-by-county map of the results of the 2016 United States Presidential election.

A Chinese businessman once voiced his disdain for American elections, lamenting that they are "highly unpredictable" and thus difficult to plan around. To be honest, this shouldn't be surprising; businesses like predictability and in authoritarian states like China, elections often have pre-determined outcomes. However, the 2016 United States Presidential election, held last week, proved to be anything but predictable as every pollster, pundit, and prognosticator was proved wrong when Donald Trump won the presidency by a score of 306-232 electoral votes over Hillary Clinton. This came as a shock to everyone, Clinton and Trump supporters alike (myself included), and in the days since, everyone has been asking themselves the same questions: How did this happen? Why did so many people vote for Trump, in spite of his inflammatory and bone-headed comments? Did gender, race, or immigration play a role? In this post, I'm going to examine each of these questions and give you my own thoughts on the factors that led to Trump becoming the 45th President of the United States.

The campaign leading up to this election was anything but ordinary: Wild accusations, gaffes, and insults traded between the candidates became everyday news. Donald Trump, with his off-script, firebrand manner, made many inflammatory statements about his opponents, Republicans and Hillary Clinton alike. In addition, the revelation of questionable past business dealings and unflattering comments about women and minorities made Trump's campaign a daily Public Relations nightmare. The Clinton campaign wasted no time using the struggles of the Trump campaign to their advantage; indeed, the Democrats' strategy for winning the election seemed to consist solely of discrediting Trump's character and his fitness to be President. Considering Trump's lack of experience (having never served previously in government or the military) and his unrestrained manner, this appeared to be a solid game plan. As the campaign wore on, Clinton's lead in the polls steadily grew and by November 9th, it seemed like the election would be only a formality, a coronation for the country's first female President.

Unfortunately for Clinton, the United States isn't China. As usual with Presidential elections, the first few states called on Election Day carried no surprises. However, after a couple of hours, the heavily anticipated vote counts from the swing states of Florida and North Carolina started to trickle in, and they indicated that Trump was faring much better than expected. In particular, Florida, a battleground state where many expected the count could go late into the night or early hours of the next morning before a winner was declared, was actually called quite early for Trump, a surprise to many observers and an ill omen for the Clinton campaign. Before long, Trump had secured victory in both North Carolina and Florida, and began looking toward the Mid-West swing states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan for an edge. As the numbers came in, the nation held its breath as it watched the unthinkable happen: Trump, who needed a Hail Mary to flip at least one of these "reliably blue" states, ended up securing victory in all three to win the election.

I watched all of this drama unfold live on CNN. It was interesting to see the mood of the commentators change throughout the night, from confident and relaxed at the onset to concerned and confused at around the midpoint and finally to shocked and dismayed at the conclusion. Once it was obvious that Trump was going to win the election, the commentators and analysts began asking: How did this happen? After all of the terrible and off-putting things Trump had said and done, why would so many people still go out and vote for him? After these questions were posed, it wasn't long before the accusation of sexism, racism, and xenophobia on the part of the American electorate began flying. Celebrities and personalities all over social media voiced their displeasure, accusing voters of sexism for having decided against electing the first female President, despite the fact that Clinton was obviously much more qualified to hold the office than Trump. On CNN, contributor Van Jones delivered his now-famous monologue in which he declared that the result constituted a "White-lash", or a vote of opposition by white people, against the increased political presence of minorities and influx of immigrants into the country.

Ultimately, these critics are wrong in their assessments of the voters and the reasons why Trump was elected. You see, voters have very practical concerns when it comes to selecting a new Commander-in-Chief. Many political observers and activists often see issues  through a certain viewpoint that agrees with their ideology but may not be shared by the average voter. For example, many of these such observers and activists were hoping to see the first female President elected, especially when that candidate was running against someone who had made very negative remarks about women in the past; for them, the politics of gender were front and center in this election. However, voters who had more pressing concerns (such as economic security, healthcare, taxes, and jobs) didn't have the luxury of spending their vote on the candidate that would provide the best political optics; instead, they voted for the candidate who they felt would serve them best as President.

That candidate was Donald Trump, a successful businessman who made trade reform with the aim of bringing back well-paying manufacturing jobs a centerpiece of his campaign and whose experience building businesses in the private sector was set to help him do just that; by contrast, Clinton admitted that she possessed little economic acumen and promised that her economic policy would simply be a continuation of that of President Obama's administration. Did this decision to vote for Trump mean that the voters endorsed his vulgar past comments about women, and by extension, establishes them as sexists? Of course not. No one likes the remarks that Trump made about women, but the American voters were not voting for a role model or a best friend; they were voting for a President who could help make their lives better, and when the choice presented to the voters for that purpose was between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, they chose Trump.

Next, you have the Van Jones argument, that voters supported Trump because they hold racist and xenophobic sympathies. Aside from the obvious problems with proving that over 61 million Americans are unabashed racists and xenophobes, you can discredit this idea entirely by simply looking at the election data. In 2008, President Obama was elected over John McCain by a margin of 365-173 electoral votes and 69-60 million popular votes. In 2012, President Obama was again elected by a margin of 332-206 electoral votes and 66-61 million popular votes. As you can see, Obama was elected by comfortable margins each time. However, many of the voters who helped place Obama into office voted for Trump this time around. Does that mean that the same voters that voted for Obama twice have all of a sudden become racists in the four years since the last election? Ridiculous. A truly bigoted nation doesn't elect an African-American to the Presidency by comfortable margins twice. Of course, this kind of rhetoric shouldn't be surprising coming from Van Jones. After all, he's made a career out of race politics, so it's in his professional interest to spin every topic into a race issue. The day that race is no longer a hot-button political issue is the day that he finds himself out of a job.

Unfortunately, the Left's excuses for the loss didn't end there: The Electoral College, the media, independent candidates, the FBI, the Russians, the Democratic party, minorities, and Hillary Clinton herself have all been blamed for the loss. However, instead of tackling each of these excuses in turn, I'll just let it suffice to say that the Left is currently in a tailspin, desperate to find a scapegoat that massages their political ideology rather than accepting the most obvious and accurate explanation: That their movement is simply out of touch with the average American voter. You see, through Obama's 8 years in office, the Democratic agenda has been met with a lot of success on the coasts of America; social justice and liberal progress initiatives thrived in the left-leaning states of New York, Massachusetts, California, Washington, and Oregon. But while that was happening, the heart of America, the states of Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania were struggling and decidedly less interested in any social agenda and more so in economic policy, an area where they had been left behind. So, it should come as no surprise that when the 2016 Presidential Election came around and the Democrats asked these same states to vote to keep them in office that the answer was a resounding "No".

Instead, these the voters in these states started their own movement, a turn in the tide, if you will, that demands change in the form of a new government that puts the people's basic need of economic security first, rather than frivolous "cultural progress" initiatives. That is what Donald Trump and the Republican Party have promised to deliver, and that is what the American people really need. With a unified Republican government in office starting on January 20th, this is the best opportunity that we have had in a long while to effect real, constructive change and progress. I'll be watching closely, because if they manage to succeed, American's best days will truly lie ahead.